Lycosidae
by spiderstan0spiderstan
Summary: A collection of oneshots chronicling the post-civil war relationship of Black Widow, Iron Man, and Spider-Man. Set in the MCU. Each chapter is a story.
1. Instar

By many standards, including her own, Natasha was overreacting.

Tony Stark's allies were Tony Stark's business, but he knew she had a habit of snooping. And he knew how she'd react in a situation like this. It'd been frighteningly easy to dig up information on the new boy and cross-reference from there. Anyone could have done it.

Fifteen years, four months. Born in the new millennium.

It left a horrible taste in her mouth.

Certain people in her life would have called it paranoia. This was a stunningly unprofessional course of action, but professionalism had gone out the window when Captain America and Iron Man had started bickering like toddlers.

The sun was out in full, pre-summer force, excusing her a set of sunglasses. She'd picked a good day to do this. She wasn't one for side projects, but some things were personal.

He wouldn't be the first, if she was right.

Natasha had learnt very early on that no amount of information technology could stop people from hiding things, and no amount of failures would stop people from trying. Whenever the infrastructure was present, similar cases sprung up.

The necessary genetic mangling wasn't pretty in the best of cases, but starting either in early childhood or post-puberty made it a lot easier. If he was as new to his abilities as his fighting style made him look, he'd be something of an outlier. Maybe a trial run-

Black Widow trainees had started out older until the process was tweaked to avoid breaking them completely. The serum used on Steve would have killed a child.

The bell rang, and a torrent of teenagers flooded through the gates. Spider-Man stood out, alone in the crowd of cliques. He had a handful of regular contacts, but apparently they had better plans.

He'd been steadily overachieving until about eight months ago, either when his career had started affecting his grades, or when he'd started actually being there to get them.

Natasha had never been an academic. She'd made more sense as an athlete, or someone pretty and vapid and playing to stereotypes. By the time she was negotiating her image in such detail, she'd aged in to bigger things.

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called Peter's name.

He looked smaller in street clothes: jeans with the cuffs rolled for size rather than fashion, paired with a hoodie that swamped him. Worn-out shoes and a backpack, one earbud dangling through the collar of his hoodie, a tuft of brown hair fluffing out from under the hood. If she'd had to style him as harmless, she would have ended up with a near-identical array.

"Follow me," she told him. He hesitated briefly, but did so.

"I know- I know who you are," he said, tucking his thumbs under his backpack straps and shifting the weight as they walked. "And I don't trust you. You know that, right?"

"Good, you can recognise faces," she answered. "I won't tell. Do you want to go to a cafe or a diner?"

Confusion flashed across Spider-Man's face.

"Uhhh…" he said, startled. "Cafe?"

He followed her to her favourite such place without question. She'd chosen it for the unique decor, vegan options, and the fact that it was a complete and utter playground for her purposes. Nothing left the cramped front room, because it was lousy with sound-dampening materials and unspoken promises that gossipers would suffer. It was also completely empty when you booked it to be.

Spider-Man hovered awkwardly by her side, looking unsure. She led the way to a corner booth, which was mostly just an assortment of pillows.

"I"m getting coffee, do you want anything?"

He allowed her to order his drink and bring it to the table, which either meant he was very trusting or very stupid. The two got hard to discern.

"So," Natasha began. This was a conversation, not an interrogation."Who trained you?"

He'd lie, most likely, but he probably wouldn't be good at it. He didn't seem to have much by way of subtlety. If someone had designed him, they'd put a lot of effort into brute force, and little else. Like Steve, without the vetting process.

It was a common mistake. People assumed boys could get by on strength alone.

"Nobody," Spider-Man said, trying to scoop whipped cream off his abomination of a 'coffee' with the scalloped end of his straw. "I'm...self-taught. I have Tony Stark now, though, so I'm doing fine."

Natasha made a mental note of that. Self-taught. That explained a lot.

"Then where'd you get your powers?" she asked.

"Is this going to be a regular thing?" Spider-Man asked, abruptly uncomfortable. "Are ex-Avengers gonna keep showing up in my life and interrogating me? 'Cause I need to start planning around that if you are. People knowing who I am could get me in a lot of trouble."

"No," Natasha said. "Call it curiosity."

They'd been briefed and introduced on the way to Germany. His suspicion was very much justified, and she was already surprised at how much she'd gotten away with.

"Chance." It was a simple answer, and a fraudulent one. "Well, it could have happened to anyone, anyway."

Superhuman powers and no training. Someone, somewhere had been very, very irresponsible.

"I didn't ask how, I asked where," Natasha explained. Usually she wouldn't get anywhere, being so direct. The willingness to answer was...disquieting. "You're clearly local, but if you'd been born with them you'd fight differently."

Spider-Man was silent for a second, before locking her with pleading eyes.

"You have to promise you won't tell anyone, okay?" he said. When Natasha nodded, he continued. "Interfering with science I shouldn't have. On a school trip. Please don't laugh."

The surge of relief Natasha felt was like breathing in after being held underwater.

He wasn't lying. Every element of his- genuinely messy, not coached to communicate anything- body language indicated it. There was nothing and nobody to blame. This boy was unique- a mistake.

Thank God.

"Chance," she said. She sipped her coffee. "And Tony still brought you to Germany?"

"He-" Spider-Man made a short, frustrated huffing sound. "Why wouldn't he have brought me? I'm qualified. Not like, you qualified, but still qualified."

Had Stark told him that? If so, he'd been lying. Peter fought like an untrained child who happened to have access to super-strength and an extra axis of motion. Because that was what he was. If not for his enhancement, sloppy form alone would have killed him.

"Right," she said, dryly. "Are you staying with him, then?"

At that, he perked up slightly, almost smug, the way smart men got when they'd been convinced they had found out something secret.

"You're trying to convert me!" he accused. "I knew this would happen. I'm not switching sides."

"I don't want you to," Natasha said. "I don't care what you do from this point out."

Any reasonable actor would take one look at him and tear him to shreds. The mask didn't help- he couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut, or coordinate his speech to any meaningful degree. His personality came through in everything from word choice to enunciation.

Which raised a question: what the hell had Tony been thinking?

The power set was convenient, but he'd have to be built from the ground up. She could understand the urge to circumvent standard ethics for the simple advantage of brute force, certainly, but there were massive tactical downsides to having him on your team. Someone who took keep your distance to mean fight the winter soldier hand-to-hand was a disadvantage, regardless of raw strength.

"Oh, that's good, I guess. You guys are cool and all - really cool- but you're still wrong about..." Spider-Man vaguely waved his free hand, as if to indicate the entire debacle. "Stuff. A lot of stuff, really."

His ease of obtainment. Of course.

It hadn't occurred to her because she would have been much, much harder to obtain. At five, she had been less trusting than this idiot at fifteen. She'd heard his babbling over the coms. Just being there had worked as an incentive, and the shower of technology probably hadn't hurt, either.

"It's fine," she said. "We can agree to disagree. We've all got our own motives in this mess."

Spider-Man was making a valiant attempt to stare at her without actually staring. His eyes flitted between her own, her hairline, and a spot on the wall a few inches to the right of her head, never dropping below the level of her nostrils.

"That's good, then," he said, grinning around his straw, just that little bit starstruck. "I won't tell. I'm pretty sure I'll lose my lab privileges if I get caught having coffee with dissenters. Did you ever go in Tony's labs? Y'know, before? To synthesise, like… assassin stuff? They're so cool."

He was vaguely reminiscent of Clint's children. Oblivious and upbeat, because that was what kids were like when allowed to run wild.

Trying to get logical thought from an underdeveloped brain was like staring at a lump of clay on a pottery wheel and hoping it spontaneously became a vase. There needed to be some sort of molding involved, and the moral way tended to be slower.

"Sorry," he said, sinking back into the cushioned booth. "That's probably secret. I'm kinda new to this whole... everything. Point is, Tony has cool labs. I'm probably not making sense. Sorry."

"You really like Tony, don't you?" Her tone was distant and slightly fond, calculated to sound as if she thought the obsession was sweet, instead of massively exploitable.

"How could I not?" Spider-Man asked. His face lit up, and the idolatry kicked in full-force. "He's amazing. He's like- he's what every single scientist in the world wants to be. It's like- like, if I was an actor, right, and Leonardo DiCaprio showed up at my house and was like, 'Hey, wanna come be in my next movie?'. It was basically the best day of my life."

"Captain America dropped a jetway on you, and it was the best day of your life?"

"No, no, see- you're focusing on the jetway," Spider-Man explained, gesturing to her with his drink. "I'm focusing on the Captain America. You- you gotta look at the positives. Not that it was like, positive as a situation- it sucked. Everything's going to hell in a handbasket. But on the other hand, Captain America!"

How saccharine.

Their dissenting coffee date ended with an exchange of numbers and a phone call.

"I don't know what you think you're doing," Tony said, the second she picked up. "But- don't."

"Don't what?" Natasha asked, solely to irritate him.

"Oh, I don't know, show up out of nowhere and do nothing but bother my protégé?" Tony said. "I know that things like empathy and international law don't come easy to you, but seriously? Leave him alone."

A project. Of course. Tony loved making things he could show off.

"You know why I'm interested, right?" she asked. "Most people hit the driving age before going up against Hydra-made supersoldiers. Outliers are interesting."

There was a moment of silence, then a sigh.

"That's not what this is," Tony said. "Look. I'm not trying to stop him. I can't. He's literally superhuman. But I can make what he's doing even less dangerous. I have the technology to do that and I'm sharing it. If he wants to help out, he can. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a psychopath."

Sometimes, she wondered how much better things could have gone if he'd developed a sense of responsibility before the age of thirty-eight.

"Wow." She drew out the word. "How noble of you, bubble-wrapping the child you brought into combat."

The word, in this case, was shorthand for many things- unprepared, untrained, and uninformed, for a start. Natasha knew from experience that people were breakable, regardless of age, and the worst case scenario of tears and lifelong trauma could happen at any point, but she also knew how to appeal to taboos.

"I didn't make him do this. I didn't 'bring' him into anything." Tony protested. "Germany was voluntary. 'Picking up my slack' or whatever the papers are calling it is voluntary. He's got great talent, and if I want to help him develop that, that's between the two of us. You aren't involved."

Stark had always been possessive. She'd seen children throw similar tantrums, when they didn't want to share their friends.

He'd sort of missed the boat on neuroplasticity, if 'development' was what he was going for. Teenagers took a special kind of artistry to mold because they struggled with authority by nature. Either he really liked the kid, or he was very desperate.

"If I want to talk to him, that's between the two of us," Natasha answered. "I'm not doing any harm. I'm not the one who bugged him."

"The suit is bugged, not him. He's not supposed to take it everywhere," Tony said, as if that excused it. "I had trackers on the whole team, just in case. You can't say you didn't know that."

"Does he know?"

"He builds his fighting tech from scratch," Tony said, irritated. "If he didn't want them there, they wouldn't be there. He's not stupid."

"UNICEF would have a field day with you."

"Nat, honey, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean I'm wrong," Tony said, faux-soothing. "Assuming that Spidey's dumb enough to be pressured into all of this is an insult to his character. He's not that easy to influence." 

"But you still won't let him talk to strangers." Isolation was an effective strategy, but probably not a deliberate one in this case. Stark wasn't that cruel, not on purpose. Pressuring and persuasion were far more his style.

"He can do whatever he wants, I'm not his mom. I don't let him do anything," Tony said. "You're the one who switched sides. This is a matter of basic security, because he has clearance to things you currently don't, and you have a history of stopping at nothing to get information."

"I have no interest in him specifically," Natasha said. "You know exactly why I did this. Don't pretend you don't."

There was a brief pause.

"And you think I'm overprotective?" Tony said. "Natasha, I know the sources of my coffee beans, do you honestly think I wouldn't do a background check?"

Either he'd rushed it within the idiotic time limit they'd had, or he'd been informed on Spider-Man for months without sharing that information with anyone.

"You don't ask questions when you're desperate," Natasha said laconically.

When Tony Stark wanted, Tony Stark got, with a spectacular kind of single-minded focus that she'd never seen anywhere else. It was how he'd made the arc reactor. It was also how he'd made ultron.

"Well I did this time, okay?" Tony insisted. "He's fine, the situation surrounding him is fine, and this is none of your business."

"Prove to me that it isn't." Natasha was obstinate.

Tony huffed at her, like a petulant teenager.

"Natasha, you are being frustratingly arbitrary here," he said. "Would this even bother you if he was three years older?"

He ended the call on that note, and the argument with it.

Natasha gathered her things, and left the cafe.

An hour later, she called Spider-Man.


	2. Mermithidae

Tony was starting to feel a little guilty.

He'd figured, hey, Augustine is pretty subdued. The staff didn't ask too many questions and the decor wasn't overwhelming. He could take a stranger there without starting too much drama, which was a rare gift in a restaurant. And Peter would probably benefit from eating something other than his normal diet. Given that it consisted of 'sugar and carbs, as much and as fast as biologically possible,' his body would welcome any break from the norm.

Peter was looking at the menu the same way people in Lovecraft looked upon Cthulhu.

"What is… fo- fu—" he said quietly, then gave up, twirled the menu around and pointed to the word.

"Focaccia," Tony answered. "It's a type of bread. But that's not important. I could get them to make you a grilled cheese, or something. The food isn't the focal point here."

"Mr. Stark," Peter said, sounding very serious. "I'm not gonna waste this opportunity. I can make a grilled cheese at home. I can't make fo-catcha. Especially not the kind they have here."

"Okay, sure," Tony said. "But that's still not the point."

This wasn't going to be an easy conversation, partially because Romanoff was a difficult topic in herself, and partially because Peter was starved for self-esteem and clung to anyone who gave him the tiniest amount of positive reinforcement like an emotionally needy limpet. Even backstabbing assassins.

"What's vegan 'a'-'i'-with-dots-over-it-'o'-'l'-'i'?" Peter asked. "I know that it's- there's ...salad involved, but—"

"Aïoli," Tony clarified. "It's made of garlic and olive oil. Just— order something you recognise. Point is, Natasha."

Peter froze for a fraction of a second at the name. He oozed tells, all twitchy body language and terrified eyes. Tony hadn't had formal training like Nat, just a lot of experience, and he could interpret it like large print.

"What about Natasha?" he asked.

"Why you need to be avoiding her," Tony said. Peter's eyebrows drew together. "And not listening to her."

"You tapped my phone." It wasn't even a question, more of an irritated statement.

"No, I tapped hers." Tony shrugged. "She knows. She doesn't care."

It was a little out of character for Natasha to use the same device twice, outside of anything issued by her handlers when she had them. The surveillance meant nothing to her, because— knowing Natasha— she thought she would keep getting away with it. Despite the fact that Ross still had people after her. Despite the fact that Peter's suit was technological hi-viz and he carried it everywhere like an extremely expensive security blanket. She was outright stating that she'd outsmart them all.

"Why can't I talk to her?" Peter asked. He toyed with the cuff of his closest-to-fancy shirt, and Tony prayed he wouldn't put it in his mouth. Peter was like a puppy sometimes. He chewed things.

"Because she's a world-class manipulator," Tony said. "You're not really evenly matched."

Peter just about pouted at him, doing this weird, semi-voluntary thing with his eyes that made him look like a child in a charity ad.

"I can pick up a bus ," he protested. "And, like, the vast majority of people still don't know who I am. I— I have a good skillset."

He was always trying so hard to look credible, as if he didn't have time to breathe. The learning curve would only get steeper, and he didn't seem to have realised that.

"She watched the Berlin wall come down," Tony said. " In Berlin . She's been working on her 'skillset' for longer than you've been alive. I'm not saying you're a problem. I'm saying she is."

Peter tapped his fork on the table, the motion as repetitive as a cyclical loading symbol.

"What do you think she's going to do?" he asked. "Honestly. If— if she was gonna kill me, or...like, kidnap me, she would have already."

"She wouldn't kill you. And she'd make it so she wouldn't have to kidnap you," There wasn't a good way to phrase any of this. "Talking to her is…risky. There's a lot you couldn't be trusted with if you were in regular contact. And, no offense, but you're an easy target for her. She's spent decades learning to read people, and you're not even an open book at this point. You're easier than that. You're a billboard. You're skywriting ."

"But why—" Peter relented to his nerves and started nipping at the skin around his bitten-down nails. "Hypothetically, even if I was so— if I was willing to do something like that, I just don't feel like I got anything to offer her, you know? She's really good at this . And, like, like— I'm…not. Yet! I'm not at her level yet ."

Sometimes Tony wondered if the kid was aware how much of a walking guilt-trip he could be.

Peter's idea of her level probably didn't include training in avoiding what Natasha did. There was a lot of skill in keeping her out of your head. It wasn't even malicious half the time. Just a matter of how she'd learned to interact.

"Well, from where I'm standing, you have a lot of your own appeal," Tony explained. "You have your technology, and you're very, very powerful. You're not too street-smart but your IQ is a major advantage. And you're still new enough to all of this that you're… flexible . And even if she has good intentions— which I doubt— the people tailing her probably don't."

Peter had a guilt complex beyond his years. If anyone decided to take advantage of that, then…

It'd taken Tony ten minutes to get him to agree to Germany.

What would someone else do with him?

"I guess… " Peter said, like he didn't really believe it. "Does bourbon syrup taste like syrup -syrup or bourbon, 'cause, I don't know what bourbon tastes like?"

After food had been ordered, and Peter had gone from looking suspicious of Tony's talking points to looking suspicious of his French toast, the conversation continued.

"I just don't understand what you're expecting to get from her." Tony said, in-between bites of his eggs cardinal. "She's not going to teach you anything I can't. If you want to learn… I don't know, capoeira, I can take you to Brazil to learn capoeira, and won't try and pick information out of you in return for it."

Peter took one bite of his French toast and started gazing at it like it'd offered to pay his college tuition, buy him a car, and arrange a date to Paris for him and Emma Watson.

"Will you also buy me more of this?" he said, pointing to the toast with his fork, semi-serious. "Nah, it's just— I don't like… I don't wanna call it charity, but, sorta… costing you lots. I mean, it isn't— it's not lots to you— except, like, kinda, lots of time, but—"

He gave up on talking, cramming cut-up squares of toast in his mouth instead, blinking up at Tony like he was trying to apologise in Morse code.

Tony sighed.

"Look, this isn't charity, okay?" he said. "It is a willing investment . You're paying me back by being more effective at what you do and less likely to die. Hanging around with Natasha makes you significantly more likely to die."

It was a blunt way to put it, sure, but Tony was no stranger to mental gymnastics. Sometimes bluntness was necessary.

"She… seems nice," Peter said, sounding doubtful. He broke the sentence over a sip of fresh-pressed guava juice, holding the glass like it might break at any moment. "I mean. For someone whose job is being sneaky and punching stuff."

"Nice," Tony deadpanned. He pulled up a file on his phone, some of the nicer parts of what had leaked when Natasha poured her history— among other things—onto the internet, and slid it across the table. "She's a murderer , Peter. She's not nice."

"I know that," Peter said. "I know her history. I'm— I'm not stupid, okay? I just— I give people chances, is all. You can't tell me not to give people chances."

He flipped through the file all the same, momentarily abandoning the toast to do so.

Natasha had a long and nasty history of worming her way into people and turning their traits against them. The Widow moniker had never really suited her. She'd come out more like a parasitic wasp.

It was a great thing, provided she was on your side.

"Maybe this is an alliance." Peter said, grasping at straws like his life depended on it. "She's— she isn't working with you but she's not, like, with Steve any more. I— maybe she just doesn't, like— she might not like you? I don't know. You— y-you can't assume she's malicious this time just 'cause she murdered people."

He'd already invested a lot, it seemed. In terms of time and effort, maintaining any sort of relationship with Natasha was expensive . Secrecy cost a lot.

And nobody liked being proved wrong.

"The survival rate of her allies is almost as bad as her victims'. I don't know how Clint did it," Tony said. "Look, you made a mistake. That's okay. Mistakes are inevitable. I'm trying to tell you that you have options ."

"What options, though?" Peter dragged a square of toast through the small lake of syrup on his plate. "'Ignore her' or 'yell at her until she leaves'?"

"You can train for this sort of thing, and keep doing it, if you're willing to risk that," Tony said. "Or you can get away from the assassin and forget that this ever happened. If you really prefer her , you have every right to switch."

The circles Natasha moved in tended to be ever-shrinking, as her contacts fell off the map or, more often, were killed. It wasn't the sort of environment anyone should be in, let alone the team's token innocent.

Tony maintained a practiced expression of indifference while desperately hoping that Peter would make the right choice, the safe choice. He didn't have a backup plan.

Peter spent a moment considering the options, his free hand drumming softly on the white tablecloth. He tapped the screen of Tony's phone again and skimmed something, his eyes following the lines.

"If— if I stop… associating with her," he said, "can you make sure she can't get to me?"


End file.
